The Giffords Vote: "It's Enough To Make One Feel Like a Bit Like a Heel"

It’s enough to make one feel a bit like a heel. Here we are, supposedly hale and sound of limb, squabbling and name-calling about Satan sandwiches and moons of yogurt and brides at altars. And there is Gabrielle Giffords, who has been fighting a far more personal fight — first for her life, then for the ability to walk, eat, speak, perform the myriad simple tasks that we dispatch without a moment's thought. And she is the one who manages to show up and vote. Democracy, like walking, is something we tend to take for granted. We assume that the complex and garbled apparatus will — until the moment it nearly doesn’t. This was a time when it did. Amid worries that perhaps the process will break down this time, a slender woman walks carefully across the floor and presses “Yes.”